Fact, fiction, all jumbled up

If one chooses to walk into a theatre for a film which is titled ‘The Sabarmati Report’, one knows what to expect. But here we get more than what’s expected! Not just a narrative aligned with the findings of the Nanavati-Mehta Commission in 2014, but also what the Hindi media had to endure at the hands of the English-speaking snobs. At least, till the time India became Bharat, which roughly coincides with 2014!

In one of the initial scenes, protagonist Samar (Vikrant Massey), a photojournalist-cum-reporter working on the film beat for EBT News, is told by his girlfriend, “Hindi reporter ka respect kam hota hai.” Wonder what she would have to say about regional language reporters — Assamese, Bengali… Malayalam? I shudder to think.

But our hero has what it takes to rise above such prejudices and herald an era where Hindi is respected and Hindi media trusted. Not without wallowing in self-pity though, for five long years — since the day he gets embroiled in newsroom politics over the reporting of the Sabarmati fire incident with his bosses, and departs with these brave words, “The world looks up to the media for the truth, but the media looks up to its owners before portraying the truth.”

‘The Sabarmati Report’ is a fictionalised presentation of the real-life events surrounding the burning of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, which resulted in the deaths of 59 people. The train was returning from a religious gathering in Ayodhya.

To give director Dheeraj Sarna his due, he brings up the contradictory reports and theories about the horrifying incident in detail, but only to crush the opposing viewpoints.

Anyway, what brings Samar out of his five-year-long drunken stupor is a young intern Amrita Gill’s (Raashii Khanna) interest in his original recordings. Amrita has to do a report on the current conditions of the Godhra victims to mark its five-year anniversary. After watching Samar’s tape, she sets out in pursuit of the truth. Without telling her bosses, she pays Samar Rs 30,000 to accompany her. An intern like her would be a godsend to any media house!

Their quest for the truth, which makes them face friends and foes from the minority community in equal measure, and a parallel track involving a big media house trying to bury the truth make ‘The Sabarmati Report’ more of a thriller than a humane story.

The visual reconstruction of a conspiracy theory — how a large Muslim mob attacks the S-6 and S-7 coaches near the Godhra railway station, throwing stones before setting the train on fire — should have been able to touch hearts. But it fails to do so. This despite Massey’s nuanced portrayal of a journalist who is hot on the trail of truth, and despite the liberal use of real-time footage! The story is more about maligning the media, English media in particular, rather than capturing the pain of those who suffered, both in the train fire and the riots that followed.

Though the narrative is partial towards one community, there are sprinkles of secularism here and there — ‘Imandar log dono taraf hote hain’ is one dialogue we get to hear more than once. There is a scene where the adults cheer for Pakistan during a World Cup final match in a Muslim-dominated area and the children come out in hordes, burst crackers and dance to ‘Chodo kal ki baatein, kal ki baat purani…’ as India wins. But when Samar finally joins Bharat News (what else?) and anchors a programme in which he recalls the Godhra victims, the background music is a chant of Lord Ram.

The makers could have picked some patriotic song for his broadcast as well. An actor of Massey’s calibre does not need the spiritual ‘paraphernalia’ to whip up the desired emotion.